


Forward

by edna_blackadder



Category: The Baby-Sitters Club (TV 2020)
Genre: F/M, Remarriage, Widowhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28187853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edna_blackadder/pseuds/edna_blackadder
Summary: On the eve of his wedding to Sharon, Richard talks to a ghost. Esme interjects.
Relationships: Alma Spier/Richard Spier, Sharon Porter/Richard Spier
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Forward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [euphoriaspill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphoriaspill/gifts).



I’m not gonna lie, I was rooting for them all along. When Sharon first met Richard, it was like a classic rom-com, only watchable. You might think Richard developed his, shall we say, distinctive manner of speaking when he went to law school. You’d be wrong. Kid gave the impression of being born a third-year law student, but he lit up around our Sharon. He saw the colors in her.

I never met Alma Spier, but I looked her up after Sharon mentioned she was seeing a now-widowed Richard, and there’s a Scorpio if I ever heard of one. She left Stoneybrook a better place than she found it, and that’s one reason we’ve got so many great witches and witches in training here. I’d drink to that even if I didn’t want one for medicinal purposes. Judging by the way Richard is talking to her ghost in a darkened kitchen at one in the morning, he could use one too.

He’s sitting at the ancient wooden table, the one my brother hand-carved, with a photograph on his left and a cell phone blasting blue light on his right. His eyes dart between them.

“I think you’d like her,” he says to the photo, in a voice that would be low enough not to wake Dawn and Mary Anne if they were actually asleep, which I don’t believe for a second that they are. “But I wish I could ask you.”

I flip on the overhead light, and Richard jumps out of his skin. “We could arrange a ceremony for that,” I say, “but I think you need something else.”

“Aunt Esme,” Richard says, with a deer-in-headlights look. “I didn’t realize you were up.”

I smile and cross the room to what was once a junk drawer but has grown, over the years, into a time capsule of increasingly infrequent visits to a property we should have sold long ago, but couldn’t shake the feeling had a purpose yet. You should always trust those instincts, the universe’s rare little hints. I find the key just where I left it and make my way to the liquor cabinet.

“They say the ocean waves are supposed to be relaxing,” I say, “but my back pain responds better to a more conventional remedy. You want some?”

“I shouldn’t,” Richard says. He almost laughs. “I’m told I don’t handle it particularly well.”

“Exactly the point,” I say, though I do give him a lighter pour than I give myself. “You’re getting married in the morning. You want it to knock you out.” I hand him his glass, and he nods and takes a sip, then grimaces at the taste.

“This is alcohol, I suppose?” he asks. “Not some home-brewed potion?”

“Only the finest,” I say. I drain mine in one and sit down across from him. The photo is of Alma, not that there was any doubt of that, a woman on a mission rocking a power suit, and I’m equally unsurprised to see a bikini-clad Sharon smiling up from the phone, beckoning Richard to join her in the water earlier today. “Listen, Richard, you know who Patton Oswalt is?”

Richard nods, looking at me suspiciously, or rather, the way everyone who doesn’t know me looks at me and the way Richard looks at everyone he doesn’t know. “Yes, actually,” he says, “though I’m surprised that you do. I watched ‘Annihilation’ and found it largely puerile, like most of its genre, but containing staggering moments of truth.’ He shakes his head. “Then I read _I’ll Be Gone in the Dark_ and spent months looking for any excuse to lock Mary Anne in a tower in the woods for the rest of her life.”

I laugh. “I read it and thanked Michelle McNamara for devoting her life to uncovering the truth. But the reason I mentioned her husband is that he’s married again since. And some people, with nothing better to do than police strangers’ lives on the Internet, thought it was too soon. A blogger named Erica Roman had a great response to that.”

“Oh?” Richard asks. “What was that?”

I shrug. “You can Google it later, if you can tear your eyes from that picture, but the gist is that widowed hearts expand. The new love doesn’t replace the lost love; the heart makes more room. You don’t move on, you move forward.”

Richard nods. “Complicated, in my case, by the fact that the new love is also the old love. If Sharon hadn’t dragged me out of my shell when we originally dated, I don’t think I would have dared to approach Alma. As it was, she did the heavy lifting in our courtship.” He takes a cautious sip of his drink and does a better job of concealing his disgust this time, but there’s room for improvement yet. “Frankly, I can’t imagine what either of them could possibly see in me.”

“Don’t fish for compliments,” I say, rolling my eyes as dramatically as possible. “It’s not a good look. And you want to look fantastic tomorrow.”

Richard smiles. “I think Sharon’s got that covered.”

“Listen, Richard,” I say, “I think it’s sweet that you wish you could ask for your dead wife’s blessing, but the fact is, you don’t need it. Alma lives on in Mary Anne, and Mary Anne has made her feelings clear.”

“That she has,” Richard says. He takes another sip and manages not to gag. “And she didn’t get that from me.”

I smile, partly because the brew is working its magic at last, but mostly because of how ridiculously obtuse he can be. “It’s more equitable than you realize, and it’s also her friends.”

“And by the transitive property, also Sharon,” Richard says. He pushes his glass aside, his eyes drifting back to Alma’s photo. “You’d be proud of her; I’m certain of that. And I promise you, Sharon and I will live for her and Dawn.” He blinks back a tear, biting down on his lip. “You wanted Mary Anne to have a sibling,” he says. “She will. But she’s already part of a sisterhood.”

He turns back to me, just as I’m thinking that the Baby-Sitters Coven has a nice ring to it. “I know I don’t need her blessing,” he says, his voice rough and ragged. “I just wish I could show her that she doesn’t need to worry. When Alma got sick, she was as worried about me as I was about her.” He buries his head in his hands. “I don’t even believe in life after death.”

I shake my head. “That’s a debate for another day. You need to get some sleep.”

Richard sighs, then looks back up at me. “I wish I could.”

“Well,” I say, “I could offer you more of this poison, or I could just tell you that if you embarrass my Sharon tomorrow in any way, I’ll turn you into a toad.”

He chokes out a laugh. “A turtle would be more fitting.”

Then I hear footsteps in the hallway. Sharon, beguiling him even in frayed pajamas, steps into the kitchen and rubs sleep from her eyes. “Richie?” she says, stumbling into the counter. “Come back to bed. Hi, Aunt Esme.”

“Hi, hon,” I say, smiling at her, and then I fix Richard with one of my better expectant looks, but it isn’t necessary. He’s gazing at her, drawing strength from her presence and beaming through his tears.

“I’ll be right there,” he says, and he means it, as smitten now as he was then. Then he smiles at me. “Thank you, Aunt Esme.”

I grin at him, and then at the unabashedly curious Sharon. “Welcome to the family, Richard.”


End file.
